Alice Meynell_, and _The Diary of Mary Cary_) were, with a good deal of
difficulty, disposed of--yes, the whole of the fifty copies; but there
were no general subscriptions to the Press, not one, and the cost of
equipment, forty pounds, bore heavily upon me. Perhaps because of this,
perhaps because my dining room was my workshop, and printer's ink was
apt to get into the soup, I discontinued the venture--which in any case
(since I had no technical assistance and very little competence myself)
was decidedly irksome.
Meantime decisive things had happened to me. I had met George
Lansbury, inspiration of my politics, and I had met Bruce Rogers,
inspiration of all eager typographers. For the next five years I
worked in close association with George Lansbury. (I suppose that he
has lately become one of the most generally loved men in England. To
anyone who has known him in times of deep stress as intimately as
I have that cannot be surprising. There is no qualification in my
admiration and affection.[34]) In him I found a most ready support for
my "propaganda" view of good printing and good craftsmanship of any
kind. Lansbury secured the financial support which made it possible
for me to start the Pelican Press. I think the Pelican was a pioneer
in the policy of having very few types but all of them of good design.
We set advertisements for commerce, which was in those days something
of an innovation; and we printed political pamphlets in the Minority
Labour interest. These pamphlets are odd to look at now. The slogan of
"fitness for purpose" had not yet informed us. A report of the great
meetings which we held at the Albert Hall after the first Russian
revolution was designed with the mannered elegance which would have
suited better an essay by Walter Pater. And I remember myself writing a
double-page political manifesto for the _Weekly Herald_, calling upon
the proletariat to rise and end the war, which was set in Cloister
Old Face with a seventeenth century flower border and sixteenth
century initials.... I set up with elegance what must be the rarest
of Siegfried Sassoon first editions. I myself have no copy. Bertrand
Russell brought him to see me when Sassoon had decided to refuse to go
back to the war, and I made into a leaflet his letter of explanation
to his Commanding Officer. I am now astonished at what we published
without prosecution. Now it would be "seditious propaganda." I can only
put it down to the innocent elegance of typography!
Soon after the war I began making proposals from the Pelican Press to
various publishers. Would they allow me to print for them this that and
the other book in a "really nice" edition? I pointed out that if they
were in fact wrecked upon the conventional desert island and wished to
take with them the conventional choice of two books, Shakespeare and
the Bible, they would not find a current edition of either fit for a
tasteful shipwreck. But my arguments were fruitless--except of a plan
for myself. Why shouldn't I do what I wanted them to do? Why wait on
them? So I began to hanker after the as yet unnamed, unmanned and
unfinanced Nonesuch Press. The next step was to bind David Garnett and
Vera Mendel to the adventure.
David Garnett's family history, like my own, is full of literature. He
is the son of two writers and the grandson of a third. He too, after
a brief excursion into the Natural Sciences, reverted to type, opened
a book-shop (with Francis Birrell), wrote his first novel and, in the
same year, lent both the cellar of his book-shop and the assistance of
his critical and book-learned mind to our new venture. He too "liked"
books. He could, I mean, enjoy the feel of a book, its weight, shape,
edges, the synthesis of sensitive things which is represented by that
most insensitive word "format."
Vera Mendel was the useful necessary incubator for our schemes. She
provided our small capital and she did the routine work. She was also
our fearless critic-in-chief. The things she stopped us doing! She,
too, developed in me the sense which David Garnett already shared with
her--the sense of responsibility about texts. And she put sobriety
whenever she could into my lush "blurbs." Her flexibility of mind made
our work, too, flexible. She translated Toller's first play, which
was among our earliest books; and shared with me the editing of _The
Week-End Book_. For the first eighteen months, while I was working
full time at the Pelican Press and David Garnett at his book-shop, and
before we felt justified in employing as much as an office girl, she
did everything, from editing to stamp-licking, that I could not steal
time to do.
This about ourselves. Whence our corporate name? We began by looking
not for a name, but for a device; and we found in a tapestry surviving
from Nonesuch Palace the elements which Stephen Gooden made into our
first "mark." In adapting the device, we took also the name; and I
silenced an early objection that it was too boastful by pointing out
that Nonesuch means "nonpareil" and so had an esoteric meaning. For
nonpareil is the name of a very small and very humble size of type.
Nonesuch was chosen, then, in a spirit of mixed hope and humility.
Ralph Hodgson, the poet, who was interested in my enterprise, was most
anxious that I should call it the Pound Press. (He had lately seen and
admired my father's seventeenth-century farmhouse, which has in front
of it a delightful yard or "pound.") Every book, he urged, warming
to his subject, should weigh a pound and cost a pound! After some
intensive correspondence his enthusiasm was routed, and the Nonesuch
Press came into being.
[Illustration: Page from Montaigne's _Essays_, composed in Poliphilus
and Koch Antiqua, printed by R. & R. Clark. Published 1931; edition,
1375 sets of two volumes.]
So there we were, in 1923, in our cellar under Birrell & Garnett's
book-shop, book-enthusiasts, amateurs in the literal, though not, I
hope, the derogatory sense of the word, tackling the donkey work of
book production and the mule work of book distribution.
For nearly two years we continued in the half light of our limited
premises, producing illuminating works in limited editions, and
varying the daily task with such occasional diversions as "invoice
bees"--parties to which our friends were bidden in order to help us
between drinks with the task of writing our invoices, "statements," et
caetera.
It is scarcely worth recording the vicissitudes of those underground
activities. Only when we tried to stop an ever-rising tide of
Congreves--which, as with breaking back I eagerly unloaded the volumes
from the lorries, narrowly escaping immuring V. M. in that unhistoric
cellar for good--only then did we wonder whether, for purposes of
self-preservation, the Press might not have to expand. (Indeed, one
wall did bulge alarmingly.) Happily, part of the edition of Congreve
got lost in Devonshire.... The lorries which were carrying the bound
books from the printers at Plymouth broke down before we did.
I myself travelled the first books, being received with varying degrees
of courtesy by the book-sellers. Of those who were civil some were
encouraging, some politely discouraging. When, very soon, we were
obliged to "ration" orders, these were rewarded and persuaded, and the
discourteous received no more than their small deserts.
We meant to have fun with our business and fun we have had. Even when
it had outgrown its puppyhood we continued to button-hole our customers
and sell them not only our goods but our tastes and our views. Let me
anticipate for a moment and quote a sample from the opening paragraph
of our 1929 catalogue.
"In these days of literary censorship exercised by Sir Archibald
Bodkin (of Savidge case fame), Sir William Joynson-Hicks and a
Detective-Inspector of Scotland Yard, no publisher can be positive in
his announcement that he will issue such and such a book. Chaucer?
Fie, his language is coarse. Plato? The less said about Socrates and
his young friends, _if_ you please, the better. Shakespeare? He will
perhaps pass unchallenged, for Lamb's Tales doubtless exhausted the
censors' interest in this prurient author. Farquhar, Don Quixote
even--these too may corrupt the corrupt, which is the current legal
test of obscenity. With a propitiatory bow to Sir Archibald and to
the potent and anonymous Detective-Inspector (the unlamented Home
Secretary gets no more than a distant nod), we therefore give to this
list of announcements the precautionary title, 'Bodkin Permitting.'"
But this jape, and others, were part of a serious and deliberate
policy. From the beginning we had a plan and hoped to have a public. In
the words of our first (1923) catalogue, we intended to make books "for
those among collectors who also use books for reading." We intended
to choose our books to suit our tastes, not the imputed taste of a
hypothetical public.
Not that we felt ego-centric and exclusive about it, like the
Californian millionaire who, I am told, caused a Shakespeare to be
printed to suit his own taste and his own library--an edition of
one copy. We have made now over a hundred editions to suit our own
personal requirements--the author we wanted, the text we wanted, the
format we wanted, the decorations we wanted. And if there had been
no other profit from the Press, this shelf of my library would have
seemed in itself a sufficient recompense for my share of the work.
But fortunately, many other people also wanted these books. For our
taste proved to be a normal contemporary taste. We did not create the
vogue for Donne, for instance--we were ourselves part of that general
tendency which has in these days found him afresh.
My previous experience in printing had shown me quite clearly that,
in order to avoid monotony and to produce desirable editions at a
reasonable cost, one must intelligently exploit the best mechanical
equipment and the highest technical skill available. Today there is
more fine typographical material to be had than even the largest
printing house in the country could possess; and the various commercial
presses have developed technical skill and variety along various lines.
There was therefore no good reason, we thought, for a new "private
press" in the old style, arrogantly self-contained, and with but one
type and obsolete "hand" machinery.
Our stock-in-trade has been the theory that mechanical means could
be made to serve fine ends; that the machine in printing was a
controllable tool. Therefore we set out to be mobilisers of other
people's resources; to be designers, specifiers, rather than
manufacturers; architects of books rather than builders.
The propriety of our use of the word "Press" was called in question by
Arnold Bennett and others. Pedantically it may be wrong; by the spirit
it is nearly right. There is no exact word for our function, which
was new. Nor for my own part in that function. When I have wanted to
"sign" a book, at first I wrote "Typography by." But typography is
only a quarter of my battle, and that phrase puts undue emphasis on
one department, one only, of a job the essence of which is that it
is manifold. A number of books I signed F. M. _Finx_. But "finxit"
means "fashioned," and so "made," rather than "designed." I also used
the phrase "under the care of," but this is vague and inaccurate,
suggesting merely the oversight of someone else's designs. Perhaps
"This book was planned by" is the least inaccurate formula, though
this again leaves out the whole business of overseeing. Overseeing is
no purely typographical matter. It means the planning and coordinating
of the whole book--text, editor, and artist, as well as paper-maker,
printer and binder. In fact, it involves an editorial as well as a
typographical attitude.
[Illustration: Opening page from Voltaire's _Princess of Babylon_ with
line drawing by Thomas Lowinsky. Composed in Caslon, printed by the
Westminister Press. Published 1928; edition, 1500 copies.]
Foulk Grevill writing of the posthumous edition of Sidney's _Arcadia_
said "This requyres the care of his friends, not to amend (for I think
that falls within the reach of no man living) but only to see to the
paper, and other common errors of mercenary printing." My own interest
and ambition in founding the Nonesuch was to see to the paper and other
common errors of mercenary printing; but D. G. and V. M. aspired to
tackle the question of amendments as well. From our fourth book onwards
that policy has governed all our major publications. When, as sometimes
happens, a text needs no more editing: when it is adequately and
accurately "established," there is still the quasi-editorial function
of the illustrator. He may, he should, become in his designs more than
a decorator; he should, I believe, become a significant _commentator_.
"Kauffer on Burton" is, for example, how I would describe the drawings
for our edition of _The Anatomy_.
Our books were published in "limited editions" because we had to rope
in the collector as well as the reader and student. We have found that
it was necessary to impose another sort of limit on our output--a limit
to the number of titles we could conveniently and properly publish in
a given time. We came to the conclusion that eight books a year was
about as much as we could manage if every detail was to be our personal
concern and if all were to be freshly designed. The making of our
books in a great variety of styles was an early principle, firmly held
to. I did not want people to be able to say at the first sight of our
books, "Oh yes, that must be a Nonesuch book." I wanted them to say,
"That's not a bad looking book," and then to find that it was ours. My
calculation--it was a calculation, not a programme--proved surprisingly
right. Our first hundred books have taken us twelve years to make.
Our friends have been our editors; and our editors have been our
friends. We have had the most valuable suggestions for books, and the
most valuable criticism of details of production even, from them. I
have seldom "passed" a binding, for example, without asking Geoffrey
Keynes's opinion of it. His well-wishing has been of extraordinary
value to us, apart from the many editions which he has himself
admirably edited for the Nonesuch. It was he who introduced us to
those other excellent editors of our texts, John Hayward and John
Sparrow--the former a keen critic and helpful adviser. E. McKnight
Kauffer, Stephen Gooden and T. L. Poulton have also done for us much
more than illustrate a number of our books.
E. McKnight Kauffer (who drew us from the life for the last of
his illustrations to _The Anatomy of Melancholy_) at one time had
office-room with us. The hours I spent in discussing aesthetics with
him were stimulating--over-stimulating, we found, when there was work
to do. So, in the end, we nailed up a list of "red-herring words"
("functional," "the Artist" and so forth) which were not to be used
during office hours on pain of a fine of sixpence for each use. But
there was no sixpenny escape from George Moore. While _Ulick and
Soracha_ was at the printers, he came almost daily, hung up his square
bowler hat and settled down to read aloud to us the revisions he had
made in his last batch of proofs. Each time it was an entirely new
text. The first version was almost illiterate. The second grammatical
but undistinguished. The third a transfiguration. It was fascinating to
see the process of his composition at close quarters: and our feelings
were undisturbed by anxieties about the printer's bill, for he had
proposed at the outset that he should pay for his own corrections. They
exceeded the original cost of the setting. In any event, who am I to be
critical? For one book I had 37 different varieties of title-page set
up. My friend William Maxwell, who printed this book, said that he did
not mind "losing" (printers are like farmers) on the text of a Nonesuch
book because he always made up his loss on the title-page....
In 1925 we moved from our cellar to Great James Street and we decided
(with some misgivings) to incorporate the firm. It seemed better to
our auditors although we had suspicions that our subscribers might be
discouraged from collecting when they saw first the formula "Ltd."
on our letter-paper. We did them an injustice. The partners became
directors and shareholders. Vera Meynell bought a little book entitled
"The Secretary and His Directors" and, impressed by the legal penalties
that hedge about these offices, occasionally wound up one of our long
triangular discussions by taking down the minutes book and saying:
"Well, I suppose that this might as well have been a board meeting."
Once a year, for the benefit of Somerset House we (the directors)
presented to ourselves (the shareholders) with all due formalities,
a report on the year's accounts and progress. Otherwise it made no
difference.
[Illustration: The Antigone Greek type used in Homer's _Iliad_,
decorated by Rudolph Koch. Printed by Joh. Enschedé en Zonen. Published
1931; edition, 1450 copies.]
Even the "mundial bad-time" (to quote the phrase of an Indian friend)
of 1930 did not seem to affect us or our customers much. But the second
year of the great depression brought onto the market many hoarded
copies of our books from the pickle-shelves of profiteers and deflated
some of their more astronomical prices. Our survival-value (as luxury
trades go) is perhaps due to the fact that even in boom-time we tried
to be honest traders, not using our success with collectors to put
prices as high as the traffic would bear, but giving a constant ratio
of good value in the sheer materials of book-making, so that our paper,
printing, binding were as good as any to be had at the price.
No book-producing of our kind can subsist without sales in America. It
was our good fortune to ally ourselves in 1927 with Random House of New
York. No collaboration could be more satisfactory from a technical or a
personal point of view. It survived the get-rich-quick temptations of
1929; it has survived the difficulties of the depression. New blood and
money entered the Press two years ago when Cecil Harmsworth, Desmond
Harmsworth and Eric Harmsworth joined our board. But they belong to our
Second Century, not to our first.
We have avoided antagonisms, even avoided competition. My friend Osbert
Sitwell suggested that we should publish a satire on Noel Coward;
Coward that we should publish his satire on the Sitwells. To both we
said "no." How pleasant it would have been to issue them together in a
single book! When I found that Peter Davies and the Nonesuch were both
planning to reissue Cobbett's _Rural Rides_, we met and tossed for it.
He won; and our editorial work was made over to him.
Of all Nonesuch books that by which I should best like the venture to
be judged is our Shakespeare, edited by Herbert Farjeon. It brought
us, among other things, a characteristic contact with T. E. Lawrence.
Lawrence had written a letter of fervent praise of the Shakespeare to
David Garnett; and I sought permission to use it. David Garnett was
himself our ambassador. Lawrence appealed to the group of friends with
whom he happened to be. "I don't want my letter to be reprinted. I
hate the advertising of my name and opinions," he protested. To his
obvious chagrin (for Lawrence had a passion for publicity as great as
his passion against it) his friends supported his view. "After all,"
said they "you are not a Shakespeare expert." That decided Lawrence. "I
think it is my duty to give permission," he said. This was his letter:
"We turn over to the Nonesuch Shakespeare. There you have created a
most marvellous pleasure. I have handled it ever so many times, and
read THE TEMPEST right through. It satisfies. It is final, like the
Kelmscot Chaucer or the Ashendene Virgil. And it is a book which
charms one to read slowly, an art which is almost gone from us in
these times. Every word which Shakespeare uses stands out glowing.
A really great edition. The tact and grace of your editor have been
surpassing. I think I like the size and shape and binding almost as
much as the text. The paper, too, is just right. Altogether a triumph.
One of the best things is that it can be done again. Nobody will
ever dare to produce the old type of edition now, while your text
stands there to reproach them. It means a permanent improvement in
Shakespeares."
"There they are, my fifty men and women." They must speak for
themselves, and I have almost silenced them with my chatter. For their
successors I can say only this: that it remains the ambition of the
Press to make a worthy edition, textually and typographically, of every
major English writer who has not already been appropriately served. It
will make these books for money, and has no shame in that. We are not
"Gentlemen Farmers" but workers at our trade. But we are enthusiasts
also, even in our middle years; and still propagandists. Every
well-designed book or advertisement or prospectus is the begetter of
others; and good printing is one of the graces of life even where life
is ungracious.
[Illustration: Title page for small book edited by Francis Meynell,
composed in Janson and "printed on the premises" at the Press on Van
Gelder mould-made paper. Edition, 1250 copies.]
In a letter from Vienna in 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes
of Prince Eugene's library that it is "though not very ample, well
chosen; but as the Prince would admit into it no editions but what are
beautiful and pleasing to the eye and there are nevertheless numbers of
excellent books that are but indifferently printed, this finikin and
foppish taste makes many disagreeable chasms in this collection!"
I should like to make Prince Eugene patron saint of the Nonesuch. And
dear Lady Mary as well; for it remains the object of the Nonesuch Press
to meet tastes finikin and foppish like his, studious like hers.
COMPOSED IN POLIPHILUS AND BLADO TYPES
FOOTNOTES:
[34] When we published the Compendious _William Morris_ I sent
copies to G. L., to Ramsay MacDonald and to Mr. Baldwin--the last a
stranger to me. Their replies make almost a résumé of their political
characters. G. L. saw in the social essays a conscience-pricking
reproach about things left long undone. J. R. M. saw in them a cause
for self-congratulation. Mr. Baldwin did not answer for nearly two
years: the book had been mislaid. But when he did answer he covered two
pages with his close hand-writing to apologise and explain. The Perfect
Gentleman!
[Illustration]CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD[Illustration]
_Printing for Love_
From _Cockalorum_: A Bibliography of the Golden Cockerel Press, June
1943-December 1948. (An address to the Art Society, University of the
South West of England in Exeter, June, 1947.) Copyright 1950 by the
Golden Cockerel Press. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher.
[Illustration] I have called this talk "Printing for Love." I have not
come to preach a gospel to you, but, as I proceed to discuss printing
and publishing and book-illustration, it will be apparent to you that
one of the tenets of my religion is that we workers should do our
job, whether it be farming, or gardening, book-keeping or building,
hewing coal or engineering, _with a will_. In Ecclesiastes the Preacher
advises us: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
(Ch. 9, v. 10.) You may say that my job is a nice job; that it is all
very well for me to talk. I can assure you that book-manufacture is
a most intricate process. Things tend to go wrong at every stage of
production. Of worries we printers have no end.
I often feel like an Irish farmer driving his pig to market. In one
hand he holds a stick to prod the pig. In the other a string tied to
the pig's leg. The pig goes to the right and then to the left and
the countryman wonders will he ever get that pig to the market. Many
of my books are like that pig. They drive me to despair. And yet I
love my printing like a mountaineer loves his mountains, which he
climbs arduously with sweat and aching limbs. He has his reward when
he reaches the summit and enjoys a fine view, much as I enjoy the
appearance of a book which I have made with infinite pains. For both of
us there is the joy of achievement--of something attempted, something
done.